After two days in Lisbon, I've given up on making any headway in the language. When written, Portuguese is recognizable as a Romance language, a close cousin of Spanish, so I understand the gist of most of the signs, but the spoken language is completely impenetrable. It doesn't sound anything like Spanish or Italian; all the sh sounds make it seem almost Slavic.
Fortunately, I'm getting by just fine with olá, bom dia, obrigada and my grammar school Spanish. The staff at my hotel speaks impeccable English, but I was amused by this notice in my room.
I think someone was relying on Google translate here. Thank you for your comprehension might literally mean something similar to Thank you for your understanding but one is a commonplace business platitude and the other might be read as vaguely insulting. But what a useful phrase!
This is a known bug. We won't have a fix for it until the next software release, scheduled for Q4. Thank you for your comprehension.
1 comment:
A fascinating admonition!
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